Realm Wraith

by T. R. Briar

  “Oh. So that’s why he’s not home.”

  Rayne shifted himself in his seat, leaning forward to his boy.

  “Listen, Levi, I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Yes, Daddy?”

  “If that man asks you to do anything, or if he starts asking you too many questions and you don’t feel comfortable, I want you to stop talking to him. I want you to come to me or David and tell us if he speaks to you, all right? Don’t tell him that I asked this, just don’t trust strangers, even if they’re Daddy or David’s friends, all right?”

  A solemn nod told him his son understood, or at the very least, was agreeing to do as he was told. As it grew late, Levi went off to bed, leaving Rayne alone on the sofa. He fumbled with the TV remote and flipped through the channels, but there was nothing for him to watch. Reality was starting to seem very dull to him now, as much as he hated to admit it.

  A key clicking against a metal lock accompanied the front door as it pushed open. David walked inside, shuffling a bit in an alcoholic haze, but not really drunk.

  “Did you have a nice time?” Rayne asked.

  “It was interesting. Your friend really likes asking questions.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  David flopped down on the armchair across from Rayne. “Mostly about you. He wanted to know about Sofia, but I just told him she had passed on. And he asked about your accident. He seemed to specifically want to know how long you had died, and if it had been a long shot, reviving you the way they did. He also asked a little bit about me, particularly why I became a doctor. You know, he actually has some interest in gardening. We talked quite a lot about some of the plants I’ve been growing, and he mentioned the vegetables he grows back home.”

  “Oh, that reminds me, Levi watered your plants for you while you were out.”

  “Did he? Good for him. I was worried for a bit.”

  Rayne scoffed. “They’re just plants; missing one watering isn’t the end of the world.”

  “You know they mean a lot to me. It’s cruel, depriving them of water just because I decided to have an evening out.”

  “I really doubt they’d care.”

  “Plants are living things, you know,” David glared.

  “That doesn’t mean they have the mental capacity to care. You should have just gone into horticulture, since you’ve such a love affair with those things.”

  “Maybe. But I like taking care of people too, even plant hating ingrates like yourself.” A pillow tossed in Rayne’s direction hit him right in the head. David stood back up. “I’d best be off to bed. You should get some sleep too, so I’ll help you get ready.”

  Rayne tried to show his appreciation, as much as he would rather do things himself. It always seemed that no matter what, whenever he was in a bind, David was always there for him. Never complaining, never asking for anything in return. He helped Rayne get ready for bed and left him for the night. When he’d gone, Rayne lay there for a while.

  Ever since the accident, he had to struggle to stay awake. Every night, sleep came far too easily to him, forcing him away from this world. But now he was restless. He wondered if what had happened in the park had something to do with this. Even if he hadn’t returned to the Abyss, his body had still been in a sleep-like state.

  As he laid there, he began to feel thirsty. He didn’t want to wake up the entire household, though. Debating whether or not it’d be worth the effort, he pulled himself into a sitting position and hopped out of bed, standing on his own two legs. His body felt light, and he turned back to the bed, already knowing that he’d see himself lying there, asleep.

  “What is this?” he asked aloud. He circled the bed, looking down at his body. “Darrigan?” he called out. There was no answer.

  Odd shades of deep blue tinted everything around him like a luminescent paint. Even the moonlight streaming through the window did not seem like moonlight at all, but a brilliant sapphire beam. Mist formed right in his own bedroom; it crawled up the walls and rippled across the ceiling, scattering disjointed rays of light.

  Rayne wasn’t quite sure what to do. He walked outside of the bedroom, savoring the sensation of standing. The hallway had the same deep blue color as his bedroom, and fog stirred here too. Strange shadows dripped in and out of his vision. They moved like living things, drawing near to him, then hastening away with broken, twitching motions. He watched them as he walked further, observing as they scattered around his footsteps.

  He passed the large mirror still standing up against the wall. The old thing had been there for years. It had always felt out of place to have it there, and it was so heavy they were unable to actually keep it properly hung. Instead, he and David had just left it there, leaning against the wall, though David complained it posed a risk of toppling over. It was a full length mirror, with an ornately detailed silver frame. A gift from someone, Rayne recalled, though he could not remember who gave it to them.

  As he walked by this mirror now, he realized he could see his reflection, unlike the pond from that afternoon. He stopped and gazed into the clear depths. The light, the fog, everything was visible on the surface. He could see himself clearly for the first time, and saw what the others saw when they looked at him. He didn’t look quite as horrible as he’d anticipated; after witnessing what was happening to Gabriel, he’d worried that his form looked just as decrepit. But he found no fatigue in his face—no dark circles under his eyes, no lines, no flesh stretched taut to reveal the skull beneath. But, his skin and hair had lost almost all their color. He thought there was a faint blue tint to his pallid flesh and nearly white hair, but he wasn’t sure if that was because of the strange lights or not.

  His eyes drew his attention the most. They were very clear and focused, and gazed right through him with piercing intensity. Instead of their normal ashen color, they appeared white, glazed over like a rotting corpse, completely devoid of substance. There was something unsettling, both about those eyes and the twisted expression on his own face, and he wondered if this was really his reflection. This other face had cruel intentions written all over it. Startled, Rayne found himself backing away from the mirror, but his reflection did not move. It merely continued to stare, further convincing him that it wasn’t him at all.

  “Who are you?” he asked. The reflection moved its mouth at the same time he did, echoing that same question. “No, maybe I should say: what are you? Are you some sort of demon that likes to hide in mirrors? Say something!”

  Again, the image moved its mouth as Rayne did, speaking only his words. Behind it, he could see the forefront of a long, dark tunnel, his hallway nowhere to be found. Dark shapes lingered in the distance, and with sudden, deafening shrieks, a great number of vicious serpents, each one larger than Rayne himself, burst forward, exploding out of the mirror and snapping their maws. He jumped back, hitting the opposite wall of the hallway just out of reach of fanged snake mouths. He could still see his reflection in the mirror leering, seemingly unbothered by the snakes appearing behind it. The center serpent reared up, and in one gulp it swallowed his doppleganger, who did not even struggle. The beast looked up at Rayne immediately afterwards, black eyes giving nothing but hollow stares.

  All around Rayne, the hallway crumbled to wreckage. The roof fell down around him in pieces, the walls cracked and fell away, and the floorboards tore apart, cascading down into an unfathomable void below. Within seconds, Rayne found himself standing on what tiny piece of floor remained, hovering in the emptiness, the mirror still floating before him. The serpents moved forward as one, a single snake with seven heads pushing from the mirror’s surface.

  “This is the Abyss after all,” Rayne realized, ducking away from biting mouths. He recognized the snakes now, for they were the same monster that had attacked him out in that field. It had not occurred to him that they were all part of a single creature. Rayne grabbed a loose piece of wood and struck at the snakes before they could get close to him. The wood hit the surface of the
mirror with a loud crack, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces that rained down into the dark, and the monster disappeared. Where the mirror once stood, there was now a black hole, and with incredible force it sucked Rayne into its maw.

  He fell from the world, where emptiness became pale clouds in a golden sky, tinted a sickly shade like some form of smog. His body smashed against a hard surface, and a loud clanging rang in his ears. He still felt as if he were moving, even though he was no longer falling, and he struggled to his feet, only to topple over in a random direction. A strange pole stuck out of the ground nearby, and he grabbed it, clinging as everything around him spun.

  The clouds around him tilted in all kinds of random directions. Was it the clouds that were moving or the ground? Rayne clutched the solid metal pole, made of the same material as the ground. All around him were bits and pieces of an immense metal structure formed of moving parts, creaking and clanging and groaning with rapid effort. His grip slipped, and everything shifted so the ground was now above him, and empty skies below him. If he lost his grip, nothing would catch him.

  “I can’t die if I fall, right?” he muttered.

  He didn’t know that for certain. It was safer staying put, he rationalized. He struggled to pull his body up over the pole, only for everything to wrench again, sending him tumbling forward. The ground returned to horizontal, lessening the threat of a nasty fall. He glanced around him as fast as he could, but the thick yellow clouds obscured all but the largest parts of this metal contraption.

  He saw a towering structure of interlocking metal beams in the distance, and scrambled towards it, no time to think. The ground shifted again and he felt himself tipping over. The structure was so close, only a little further. The ground was almost sideways now, and he began to slide down it, towards the clouds. Struggling to stay on his feet he sprinted forward before the ground became a vertical wall, and grabbed at the protruding metal beams, saving himself from tumbling over the edge.

  Safe for now, he wedged himself between the beams to keep from falling. The interlocking metal surrounded smaller bars that twisted around each other to form a spherical structure. Inside, anguished souls wailed as the great contraption holding them spun and whirled. Several of them reached out towards Rayne, trapped inside a rusted cage, just a pile of misery tossed about by some unseen force’s whims. Further away, more of these spherical cages, filled with more of the damned, spun around and around chaotically. Rayne had only been here for a few minutes and it was already maddening, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many centuries some of these poor fools had been stuck enduring this amusement park ride gone mad.

  A shadow passed overhead, and like the cry of a great bird, there was a cackling shriek. Rayne glanced up to see soaring creatures above him, demonic entities with leathery appendages, like spider-legs, only long and flat, allowing them to glide around the contraptions, landing near the soul-filled cages, where they ripped the grasping limbs from between the bars and joyfully feasted on their prey. Sometimes, they would drag out an entire person, and multiple creatures would swarm together to feed upon it. Rayne’s safe spot suddenly didn’t feel so safe.

  One of the avian beasts landed right beside him. He looked up at its empty black eyes, sockets dripping with an oily tar that flowed down across a beak. It tilted its head, and let out a long howl. Rayne backed away, but the support beam he sat on shifted in the opposite direction, dangling him out over the eternal void of clouds below. The single creature was joined by its fellows, all cackling as they stalked toward him.

  There weren’t many other options. Rayne relinquished his hold on the beam, allowing himself to fall. The monsters dove from their metal perches, pulling back their flat limbs to chase after him. As the metal cages fell away Rayne saw the full scope of what he’d been standing on: a giant set of interlocking wheels connected together in the center, covered in cages stuffed full of the damned. The many wheels spun around each other like a broken gyroscope, in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics, even passing through each other with no regards to spatial dimension. The soaring demons continued to dive after him as he fell, but then they spread their spidery limbs, screaming to a halt, and rapidly vanishing into the growing distance.

  The clouds shifted in hue from gold to jade to sapphire to amethyst to ruby and finally to onyx as he plummeted. All around him, lightning bolts lit the sky in crimson shades. Several times they struck him, the heated intensity filling his twitching body with searing pain that coursed through every limb. But as he fell, he realized he had long since grown used to such pain.

  Chapter 7

  Hitting the ground was far less painful than being struck by lightning. In fact, Rayne felt almost nothing when he fell against the magenta-colored rock.

  “You’re late.” He recognized Darrigan’s voice, and saw him standing there waiting.

  “I didn’t know I was expected,” Rayne replied.

  “I sensed your arrival and came here to wait for you. But you spent far longer than I thought you would in Tyris’s domain.”

  “Tyris?”

  “Aye, the wind queen. She’s one of the Abyss Lords, ruler over the skies. I was worried you’d encountered her. She tends to be a bit—lascivious, shall we say? But since you’re here, I’d guess you didn’t meet her. Quite lucky. I hope the Krael didn’t give you too much trouble.”

  “Those bird things?”

  Darrigan nodded.

  “What the hell are you two even talking about?” On a nearby cluster of rocks, Gabriel sat with his legs crossed, head in hand.

  “I brought him along. He arrived in the Abyss shortly after you did,” Darrigan explained.

  “Yeah, drank myself to sleep. I had no idea your friend could hold his liquor like that. We both had the same number of drinks and I could barely walk straight, and he was just peachy.” He hopped onto the ground. “I’m amazed I made it back to my hotel before I passed out.”

  “Yeah, David likes to joke that he designed his body to hold its liquor.” Rayne looked back and forth between them. “What about Apolleta? Did you find her?”

  “Why are you so hung up on that person? Isn’t she just a stranger?” A sneer hung on Gabriel’s lips.

  “I know her about as well as I know you.” An equal sneer formed on Rayne’s lips. He looked at Darrigan. “I can find her, and bring her back here this time.”

  “Oh no, you’re not leaving us alone again,” Gabriel said.

  “I agree with the idiot,” Darrigan said. “I don’t want to be left alone with him again.”

  “Then you can get her,” Rayne said.

  “Aren’t we bold today? Fine. But you still owe me, remember that.” Darrigan laid a clawed hand on Rayne’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. “Envision her, but do not go to her. If she’s here, I will find and retrieve her, and bring her back to you.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier for us to all go to her?” Gabriel asked.

  “This is a neutral place. For the time being, it’s safer for you to stay here. She could be someplace very dangerous.”

  “Every time I met her,” Rayne said, closing his eyes, “she was in fiery place. The heat was so unbearable; it was constantly crushing me.”

  The persistent leer on Darrigan’s face vanished. “That sounds like Azaznir’s domain.”

  “You know this guy?” Gabriel asked.

  “He is—No, it’s not important.” Darrigan shook his head, replacing the serious face with his usual grin. “I can sense the woman’s presence. It’s faint, but I can find her.” His form faded into smoke. “You two stay here. Especially you, Rayne.”

  The instant he vanished Gabriel pulled at Rayne’s arm. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like? He’s willing to help, so I’m taking advantage of that.”

  “But he’s a monster! You’re just helping him find more souls to do God-knows-what to!”

  “How many times to I have to tell you? He’s harmless!” Rayne’
s voice raised, but he didn’t care.

  “And how many times do I have to tell you? Just because you got some bleeding heart feeling that he’s your friend doesn’t make it true! You can’t just make some demon into your pet like that! We’re both powerless here! They have all the advantages and they’re just toying with us! Quit being so freaking naïve, you idiot!”

  “Would you shut it?!” Rayne roared. His voice was drowned out by the roaring thunder overhead, the storm he’d passed through now gathering above them. A bolt of red lightning struck the ground nearby. Black rain fell, and mist swirled at their feet.

  “Fog?” groaned Gabriel. “There’s been more and more of this lately.”

  Rayne froze, his anger temporarily forgotten as he watched the vapor intensify around them, rising from its pool around their ankles to high above them. A feeling of dread washed over him, accompanying a sick familiarity.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  “Why? Didn’t your ‘friend’ say it was safe here?”

  Rayne grabbed Gabriel’s hand and dragged him in a direction. It didn’t matter which way they went, as long as they got out of the mists.

  “Jesus, Mercer, calm down. Your hand is freezing and your nails are digging into my arm. That’s not gonna heal, you know.”

  Rayne clenched his teeth but tried to relax his grip. The air around them weighed down upon his body, and he had trouble keeping his balance. Above the mists he saw a small grouping of dead trees

  “Higher ground,” he murmured. “Maybe they can’t reach us up there.”

  “What can’t reach us? Mercer what’s going on?”

  “Shhh,” Rayne tried to keep his voice low. Too late, he could already hear hisses echoing around him, and long shadows moved through the haze. “If we can get to those trees—walk very carefully.”

  A serpent darted from the miasma, snapping at Gabriel before the two men could so much as move, and a second one materialized right behind him, wrapping its long form around him. Gabriel clawed at the constricting coils, but they refused to release him.